Crisis management: AAP encounters attack from all directions

NEW DELHI: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has been through a trying time lately. First a rebellious MLA lashed out against Arvind Kejriwal and then, a leading industry name and party member openly criticized AAP's stand on FDI in retail. So is the party in throes of a full-fledged crisis? Intriguingly, the senior leaders insisted this wasn't the case.

Confronted with this question at a press conference on Thursday, senior leader and member of AAP's political advisory committee Yogendra Yadav brushed aside suggestions of a crisis within the party.

"It would be an extraordinary expectation to assume that all 1.5-million members of AAP will have consensus on any major issue. Of these members, some are office bearers, some are official spokespersons. If they say something then that is the party's line," he said.

The party has, however, made a conscious effort to avoid future controversies by anointing official spokespersons authorized. "The list was sent to all media houses on Wednesday night," Reddy added.

The senior leadership of the party has also agreed to refrain from voicing personal opinions and stick to "overlapping consensus" on controversial issues.

Although the senior leadership of AAP is miffed with Vinod Kumar Binny for making "baseless allegations" against Kejriwal and the government in the media and will take disciplinary action against him, the party has no intention of issuing a whip to all members to stick to AAP's line on different issues.

"It's natural for people to hold varying opinions and the AAP has absolutely no intention of controlling this as long as these views are not interpreted as that of the party's," Prithvi Reddy, member of the party's national executive, told ET.

Apart from that, AAP doesn't seem affected by any of the divergent voices which are being seen as rebellion within the party. "To be honest, we are happy this (Binny eposide) is happening.

All those who joined the party for power and position have no place in AAP. It's easy for us to identify and weed them out," said a senior party leader, who did not wish to be identified.

On Thursday, Binny accused the party of "cheating" people of Delhi by backtracking on its election promises and termed Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal a "dictator".

Binny also attacked the AAP leadership for failing to bring the Jan Lokpal Bill within 14 days of coming to power as promised.

The party, however, refuted all allegations and attributed Binny's resentment to the party's ignoring his interest in a ministerial berth and then a ticket to fight the Lok Sabha election from East Delhi.

"If he had any grievances against the party or its leaders, there are ways of expressing it. He could have taken up the issues in the party, but never did he raise such issues during any of the party meetings.

It's very sad," Yadav said. The opposition parties used this opportunity to lash out against the AAP government. Targeting senior AAP leaders, BJP leader Arun Jaitley said there is an in-built danger in establishing a political party and then going out to search its members and its ideology and noted that a group of "disparate, self-opinionated persons" has flocked to the new outfit.